Blood Simple

If we take Bob Rafelson at his word, Blood & Wine completes a trilogy about family relationships that started with the director’s two crowning achievements, 1970’s Five Easy Pieces and 1972’s The King of Marvin Gardens. Those two films are so often pointed to as evidence of the brilliance of…

Howard’s Blend

During the first few minutes of Howard Stern’s romp through his inexplicable life, he spells out his mission: Private Parts will both convert the nonbelievers and entertain the cult. Stern wants to give you plenty of hot lesbian action (and freed from FCC restrictions, he takes real pleasure in saying…

Stern und Drang

The most obnoxious man alive suddenly, for a rare moment, is calm and contemplative. “I don’t know,” says Howard Stern, his familiar voice unfamiliarly soft. “I don’t know why.” Those are words Howard Stern doesn’t say very often. He, after all, knows everything, and he’ll remind you of that on…

The Asphalt Jumble

In the two decades since Eraserhead, David Lynch has established himself as American cinema’s premier surrealist, our own Wizard of Weird. Although his first two Hollywood projects–The Elephant Man (1980) and Dune (1984)–had little room for the sort of spooky shit at which he excels, his style found its greatest…

Wiseguys Finish Last

The ingredients are familiar: Donnie Brasco stars Al Pacino as a Mafia soldier and Johnny Depp as an FBI undercover agent who infiltrates the mob. But there’s a twist. Based on a true story, the film is a grunt’s-eye view of the Mafia, and it’s not remotely “operatic” or Scorsese-ish…

Triumph of the Ill

Marvin’s Room, starring Diane Keaton and Meryl Streep as sisters who reunite uneasily for the first time in 20 years, is one of those movies about people who confront the choices they’ve made and become better people for it. Adapted by the late Scott McPherson from his popular 1992 play…

Aisle of Lesbos

If all you knew about lesbians was what you saw in movies made by lesbians, you’d have a pretty dreary picture of the lifestyle. Most of us know a lesbian or three who actually has a sense of humor, whose idea of socializing extends beyond sitting in a semicircle with…

Rosewood Burns Brightly

John Singleton’s new film, Rosewood, chronicles a shocking and little-known incident in the history of American racism–the destruction of the title village and massacre of many of its black residents by a white mob. A moderately prosperous hamlet in the pine forests of western Florida, Rosewood came under attack in…

Darth Victory

Irvin Kershner’s The Empire Strikes Back, the continuation of George Lucas’ Star Wars, is a classic fantasy in its own right. I vastly prefer it to the first film. Its textures are richer, its emotions deeper, and it’s an honest-to-Jedi movie–not a dozen jammed-together entries of a serial. On its…

Volley of the Drawls

An impressive directorial debut from writer-actor Billy Bob Thornton (who co-wrote and starred in One False Move), Sling Blade is the stark, enveloping tale of Karl, a dimwitted killer released after 25 years in an Arkansas asylum for murdering his mother and her lover. Thornton plays Karl with a guttural…

Thief Jerky

In Absolute Power, Clint Eastwood plays Luther Whitney, a master thief who burgles on little cat feet. He’s as stealthy as the Pink Panther pilferer, though not nearly as amusing. Luther, you see, is presented to us as an artist. We first see him at the National Gallery dutifully copying…

Irony-Poor Blood

Elmore Leonard’s Touch is identified on the paperback as a mystery and carried in stores next to Leonard’s celebrated crime novels (like Get Shorty). But this wan little book is actually the problem child of Leonard’s oeuvre. It’s about a former Franciscan monk named Juvenal (played in the film by…

Washington Press Corpse

On the run from a professional assassin in Shadow Conspiracy, Washington, D.C., insider Charlie Sheen stops to make a furtive cell-phone call right in front of the Lincoln Memorial–out in the open, in front of God and Honest Abe and everyone. It’s a brilliant tactical move, since the Lincoln Memorial…

Isn’t That Spacial?

At a 20-year remove, George Lucas’ Star Wars comes off less as the work of a wizard than as the weird obsessional by-product of an eccentric American primitive. If you’re not a Star Wars fanatic, and you re-see this movie now varnished to a sheen in its self-consciously spiffy new…

Animal Crackers

You can bet that at one point or another, some executive wanted the title of this long-awaited nonsequel to A Fish Called Wanda to be A Lemur Called Rollo (for the story does include such a character). While the latter wouldn’t have been the most commercial of titles, neither is…

The OD Couple

As with The Crow a few years back, a grim, real-life shadow hangs over Gridlock’d that’s hard to ignore while watching it. Both films are swan songs for stars who died too young and left beautiful corpses: Brandon Lee in the former, and Tupac Shakur in the latter (although Shakur…

Looking for Hamlet

The first movie Hamlet was played by a woman–Sarah Bernhardt, in a 1900 short of the duel scene. Plainly, Hamlet has been as open to interpretation in the cinema as it has been in the theater. Of the dozens of film versions, ranging from cross-dressing intrigues to psychological case studies…

Here Comes the Son

In Mother, Albert Brooks plays John Henderson, a science-fiction novelist recently divorced from his second wife who decides he can’t risk another relationship until he comes to terms with his mother. So he does the logical thing: He moves in with her. He hauls out of her garage all his…

Codger in the Wry

Playwright Herb Gardner managed to immortalize retirement-age concerns on the American stage with his 1986 Tony Award-winning I’m Not Rappaport, and now his film version–which he also directed–comes along to try to reclaim geriatric humor from the Grumpy Old Men gang. Of course, one of those grumpy old men, Walter…

Things to Do in Denmark When You’re Dead

Hamlet (Kenneth Branagh) is Prince of Denmark. After his father (Brian Blessed) dies, his uncle Claudius (Derek Jacobi) takes the throne and marries Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude (Julie Christie). When the late king’s ghost reveals he was murdered by Claudius, Hamlet must decide which course of action to take. Meanwhile, he…

Sells Like Teen Spirit

It could have been any town in America, and it often was: Athens, Georgia; Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Minneapolis; Austin, Texas. Seattle was just another stop on the A&R Express, another destination where the gold-card crowd could run up their expense accounts while they looked for the Next Big Thing…

Tin Pan Allen

World governments may topple, stock markets may soar and crash, deadly viruses may mantle the globe, but one constant remains: Woody Allen still hankers for a Cole Porterized New York. You have to be a deep-dish romantic, or else a blinkered snoot–or maybe both–to persist in such a demonstration. We…